


where the Light enters you

by 100demons



Category: Naruto
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4803179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100demons/pseuds/100demons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten truths about Hatake Kakashi.</p><blockquote>
  <p>Kakashi’s not sure how to draw the line between <i>love</i> and <i>want</i> when he looks up at Minato-sensei, his long yellow hair edged with dust and old blood. </p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	where the Light enters you

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Kakashi, you loser.
> 
> A brief homage to the now defunct 20_truths LJ comm, where I spent many happy hours of my life reading and clutching my chest over small, murderous fictional characters. Here's to all of us, still obsessed with ninja.

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

Rumi

 

* * *

 

 

1\. Kakashi’s not sure how to draw the line between _love_ and _want_ when he looks up at Minato-sensei, his long yellow hair edged with dust and old blood. Crush seems too small of a word to describe the ragged feeling in Kakashi’s chest he gets every time sensei tears throats apart with slick ease; like is too limited for the vastness of sensei’s shoulders, his back casting an endless shadow that Kakashi can’t quite outrun.

Words tangle helplessly on his tongue, unable to touch the hole burning through his chest like a chidori to the heart, in perfectly preserved agony.

“Let’s go,” Minato-sensei smiles when he’s finished, kunai still wet and dripping with blood. Kakashi follows him until the end.

2\. Kakashi likes the number seven best. Seven when the war first started; fourteen when it ended; twenty one when he quit ANBU; twenty eight when Naruto came back to the village. He doesn’t like counting by six as much.

3\. Somewhere over the years, Jiraiya’s left his family name behind and never gets around to circling back and sticking it back on. Still, he drops by occasionally to have a drink or six with Kakashi on the rooftop of the old Hatake family house, reminiscing about an idyllic childhood spent with his older brother.

During one of these visits, he leaves behind something else too.

Kakashi has been meaning to return it for the past six years, but he likes rereading the book too much to give it up.

4\. Jounin-sensei found wanting are stripped of their titles and ranks, their genin whisked away and found better instruction. Konoha’s children are too precious, too rare to have someone inadequate guard them. A few of the punished eventually retire and leave the village, setting their forehead protectors behind.

Kakashi leans against the windowsill, fingering the latest S-Ranked mission sent his way. He’s not sure which he really prefers.

5\. ANBU takes him in when he’s fourteen, with Kushina’s blood still drying in his matted hair. They give him a snarling mask and a sword and let him loose onto the world.

He doesn’t manage to climb out until he’s twenty.

6\. On off days, he likes sleeping until noon, then spending the rest of the time puttering around his flat in ratty jounin blues, hovering over his plant with a cup of tea. When he’s away, Gai always makes sure to stop by and check on Ukki-kun, leaving behind enthusiastic post-it notes with detailed records of his care and random fun facts about tortoises.

Kakashi’s filled an entire drawer with these notes, going through them whenever it’s raining too hard to train outside.

7\. Pakkun is the first of _his_ ninken, raised by hand since his birth. The others still remember his father and hesitate a hair’s breadth before obeying his command. They look up with shining eyes at his silver hair and his white chakra but their tails wag for someone else.

Kakashi buries them all by his father’s grave; one by one, as the years go by, until he’s knee-deep in earth for the last time, shovel heavy in his calloused hands.

It’s a quiet funeral, with just one human and four small dogs in attendance.

8\. The jounin lounge is dingy, beat up, and stocked with a vending machine that never seems to have snacks in it when you really need one. On Friday nights, it’s home to the weekly poker game, open to all those who are ranked tokubetsu jounin and higher, have enough fingers to hold cards, and can afford the ten ryou buy-in.

Kakashi is banned for a lifetime after a certain incident involving alcohol, red paint, dried boar testicles, one missing table leg and Mitarashi Anko’s left breast.

The poker table (also known as the coffee-and-shitty-romance-novel table) now has a fourth leg carved like a woman’s shapely calf, supplied by a deeply inebriated Yamato.

9\. When he’s twenty one, Kakashi spends a summer in the Fire Temple as a novitiate, setting blade and fire aside for prayer beads and the sutras of Amida Buddha. There are no mirrors allowed in the temple and for the first time in many years, Kakashi walks amongst the tonsured monks without a mask, his face naked and bare.

Kakashi is allowed one season before a messenger hawk wings its way into the temple, disrupting evening prayers with a flutter of its black feathers.

His silver hair has begun to grow back by the time he returns from the mission and passes through the great gates of Konoha. He slides his mask back on and does not ask to leave again.

10\. When he’s twenty six, Kakashi’s given a genin team he finally likes.

Later, he learns to love them too.


End file.
